Labour, school teachers hold protest march in Rivers

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Rivers State Chapter, led by Comrade Beatrice Ituboh, joined their counterparts across the country in a peaceful protest in Port Harcourt on Wednesday.

This is as some angry teachers working for Demonstration Schools of Rivers State-owned tertiary institutions also took to the streets to protests the non-payment of the salaries for upwards of five years.

The NLC protest is against plans by the National Assembly to move workers’ salaries from the Exclusive to Concurrent list to enable state governments to negotiate what they can pay.

Addressing the protesting workers, Mrs Ituboh clarified that workers in Rivers State do not have any issues about the payment of minimum wage, but that the peaceful protest was in obedience to the directives of the national leadership of NLC.

She led the protesters to the Rivers State House of Assembly where they addressed the lawmakers.

Meanwhile, the aggrieved teachers of the demonstration schools displayed banners with photos of 10 of their colleagues who died within five years of unpaid salaries.

They also had others with inscriptions; “Five years No Salaries”, “Pay our Parents”, “Wike we are more than Flyovers”, etc.

They called on the lawmakers to prevail on Governor Wike and the state government to obey court orders and pay their salaries as their families have been subjected to hardship and scavenging to survive. They said many of their members are dying and many are hungry and sick and need urgent medical attention.

The aggrieved Teachers lament the untold hardships they have been going through without salary for the past five years.

The protesting teachers later took their protest to Government House in a bid to lay bare their grievances to Governor Nyesom Wike or any top Government officials to address them.

It was not clear if the governor or any high ranking official of the state government granted audience to them as they were still busy with over week-long commissioning of projects.

It would be recalled that over 250 Teachers who were employed at the Primary and Secondary Demonstration Schools owned by three Rivers State Tertiary Institutions have been crying out to the state government to pay their five years unpaid salaries.

The affected schools are; Ignatius Ajuru University of Education Demonstration secondary school, Ndele; Rivers State University International Secondary and Staff School, Port Harcourt, and Ken-Saro Wiwa Polytechnic Comprehensive Secondary School, Bori.

Their names were immediately expunged from the State Government Salary vouchers on orders of Governor Wike who in 2016 ordered their names to be taken off the state’s payroll.

Teachers had won the state government at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria in June 2018, before the State government appealed the judgment, but Appeal was struck out for lack of merit but the Governor would yet not pay the teachers.

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